I recently decided to “publish” my high level module Caverns of Slime. To the right, you can see the various stages my map went through. And you can see that the entire process started out with map. The map was the backbone of all subsequent activities.

It all started with the first map at the top. Things that made it from the very first draft to the very end:

the ring like structure with a water flow leading to the Ooze Lord in the center

Also note how I abandoned my detailed isometric map in step two. As I drew it, I kept dreading the moment where I’d have to key it and I kept thinking that at higher levels, the party would be flying, teleporting, gating, or pass walling anyway.

As for the final map: I just drew it all using Inkscape. I wanted to write more about it, but in the end, all I did was draw lines, using a lot of Ctrl+L to simplify the paths and then editing the nodes using F2 to make it look better. Every section was on a different layer so that I could lock the rest. The most important decision was to work on paper for the longest time.

Comments

So you’re saying that you don’t doodle on paper before you turn to Inkscape? I only remember a few maps that I did in Inkscape directly: those were maps I did for Fight On! where the author of the adventure had already provided the doodle—such as this one: